The future of IT jobs: How to beat the machines

This archived Tech Pro Research report, originally published in August 2015, is available for free to registered TechRepublic members. For all the latest research reports, 100+ ready-made policies, IT job descriptions, and more, check out Tech Pro Research.

From the report:

Automation is one such area which has tremendous potential both for benefit and for job losses. While some automation such as laundry machines and dishwashers have reduced burden on consumers, they likely also have had a negative impact on workers who previously filled those roles. Nowhere is automation more prevalent than in technology, and one such famous example is Google’s driverless car, which one day might reduce accidents, drunken driving and travel stress, but may also eliminate taxi and limo drivers.

Automation in the IT realm involves such as examples as scripts, scheduled tasks, password reset portals, operating system deployment, configuration management and elaborate monitoring capabilities. Such advances don’t always translate into reducing headcount; forward-thinking organizations can bene t from technological automation to free up system admins, developers and other IT staff for more meaningful work. Reducing mindless grunt tasks reduces pressure and firefighting, and can stimulate creativity in other areas, particularly those in the revenue-generating segment.

However, in other cases automation may translate into eliminating jobs, particularly those related to basic operations. “‘One click virtualization,’ whereby operating system images can be periodically reset, has reduced the need for physical servers and the staff to maintain them.” Cloud computing backups which run in the background have reduced the dependency on in-house data storage and retrieval operations. Centralized logging utilities such as Splunk, which can comb through event logs from thousands of systems, may make it less necessary to employ large-scale staff to babysit these servers. There are dozens of similar examples - and the concept of automation isn’t merely limited to technology, but can apply to other departments as well.